ADF

The people of southern and eastern Zambia have been hit the hardest by a severe drought that began almost two years ago, so military aircraft delivering 50-kilogram bags of maize brought much-needed relief. Zambia declared a national emergency in 2024, but with ongoing food shortages and water scarcity, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) arrived at the right time with Blue Lugwasho, a 19-day humanitarian and disaster response exercise with nearly 1,000 of the region’s air force troops working alongside Zambian forces. “It’s not an exercise for these people, it’s a reality,” Zambia Air Force (ZAF) Director of Public Relations…

As drones play a larger role in battle strategies across Africa, the continent’s militaries are adding small, commercially available drones to their arsenals as an inexpensive and highly adaptable alternative to military-grade unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In recent years, African militaries have gone on a UAV shopping spree with Turkey’s Bayraktar TB-2 and Akinci drones becoming the most popular options. At $5 million each for a TB-2 and up to $50 million for an Akinci, the costs for cash-strapped militaries add up quickly. Commercial drones, by comparison, cost anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars and can…

Shortly after Capt. Ibrahim Traoré led Burkina Faso’s second coup in a year in September 2023, deepfake videos began circulating that urged Burkinabe citizens to support the coup. Since then, Traoré has become the star of a variety of videos manufactured to portray the junta leader shaking hands with world leaders, berating the International Monetary Fund, or addressing Pope Leo XIV in fluent English. The videos are carefully crafted to elicit an emotional reaction. “When people hear voices, even artificial ones, boldly articulating what they’ve always felt but rarely heard echoed, it sparks something powerful,” said Yaw Kissi, a pan-African…

The Sahelian terror group Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) has expanded across Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger largely by exploiting the region’s resources and communities for its own benefit. The al-Qaida affiliate has amassed a stable stream of illicit financing that it uses to buy weapons, produce propaganda and recruit new members. Rather than rely on a single flow of income, JNIM has diversified across four primary sources: artisanal mining, kidnapping, livestock theft and money laundering. “Its engagement in illicit economies has been key to the group’s successful expansion,” Nigerian researchers Egodi Uchendu and Muhammed Sani Dangusau wrote recently for…

Ghana’s military is bolstering its presence in the north, where people are moving south due to the rising threat of terrorist attacks originating in Burkina Faso. Ghana’s military recently deployed 400 troops to the northern town of Bawku due to bitter, ongoing ethnic violence between the Kusasi and Mamprusi communities. Burkinabe terror groups, including Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, known as JNIM, and those linked to the Islamic State group, have fueled the fighting in recent years by smuggling weapons into the area through illicit networks. Baffour Agyeman-Duah, a governance expert with the John A. Kufuor Foundation, warned that northern Ghanaian conflicts could…

Operating out of intricate cave complexes in the mountains of northern Puntland, the Islamic State in Somalia (ISSOM) has for years launched attacks on security forces and civilians. The area has emerged as a hub for generating and distributing cash for Islamic State group (IS) affiliates across Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. However, the terrorist group has suffered significant battlefield setbacks this year, and its reputation often is overstated, according to researcher Stig Jarle Hansen, professor of international relations at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Writing for The Conversation, Hansen noted that the group never has captured…

Outrage swept through South Sudan when video of a gang-rape began circulating on social media in June. The victim, a 16-year-old girl, was a member of a gang in the capital, Juba. The perpetrators were members of a rival gang exacting revenge. Few were as disturbed by the incident as Alaak Akuei, a former gang member who works to counter the rising tide of gang violence. “I was very disappointed,” he told the newspaper The Guardian. “These boys, we are working with them, we know some of them, but they are not listening. But we have to be strong, because…

In 2022, Chinese President Xi Jinping launched the Global Security Initiative (GSI) to establish his country as a facilitator for improving global security. Critics noted how the same man had used his power to author a comprehensive national security plan that expanded state repression across nearly all aspects of Chinese society. “The GSI marks a significant shift in Chinese foreign policy,” political scientist Sheena Chestnut Greitens wrote in Foreign Policy magazine that year. “[It] seeks to revise global security governance to make it more compatible with the regime security interests of the Chinese Communist Party.” Today, observers are pointing out…

Burkina Faso media overflows these days with the amazing achievements of junta leader Capt. Ibrahim Traoré: the country has repaid its foreign debt, built new low-cost housing, and he discovered a new source of oil. The reality is quite different. Burkina Faso’s foreign debt still exists and sits at $5.6 billion or 21.5% of the country’s gross domestic product. Online videos showing low-cost housing under construction are actually from Algeria. And the “oil” coming out of the ground is actually footage of a broken sewer pipe in the state of Minnesota in the United States. In short, the day-to-day reality…

Acting Defense Minister of Zambia Brenda Tambatamba led a procession of Soldiers to stand before an array of aircraft on the sun-soaked tarmac of Lusaka Air Base for the opening ceremony of Exercise Blue Lugwasho. Replete with a brass band and a fighter jet flyover, the pageantry was a fitting way to mark the return of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) “Blue” exercises after a COVID-19 pandemic-induced hiatus since 2019. Nearly 1,000 Air Force troops from across the regional bloc took part in Blue Lugwasho, a humanitarian and disaster response exercise, from September 8 to 26. Angola, Botswana, Lesotho,…